Tom On 10th April 2024, we woke up to a rude shock to the world of miles redemption in Singapore – that Singapore Airlines’ frequent flyer programme, Krisflyer, will cease their redemption of Star Alliance Round-The-World (RTW) tickets from 1 May 2024…
A Bitter-Sweet Goodbye to Round-The-World (RTW) Redemption with Krisflyer
Having experienced SQ First Class Suites, the Private Room, SQ Business Class and SilverKris Business Lounge offered by Singapore Airlines, it has always been a dream to go for the “jewel” of Krisflyer’s redemption programme – the Star Alliance Round-The-World (RTW) tickets.
At 200,000 KrisFlyer miles for Economy, 280,000 KrisFlyer miles for Business Class and 405,000 KrisFlyer miles for First Class, the redemption programme offers much value as compared to individual redemption of Savers Award. Taking a simple RTW itinerary via SQ’s business class saver awards:
SIN – MUC: 103,500 miles
FRA – JFK: 81,000 miles
SFO – TPE: 141,000 miles
TPE – SIN: 34,000 miles
This would already cost 359,500 miles. This excludes the intermediary flights from MUC-FRA and JFK-SFO, which would make the redemption closer to ~400,000 miles. With this comparison, it makes KF’s RTW 280,000 redemption looks like a steal. This is also why, over the past 5 years, we’ve been trying to accumulate sufficient miles to make this redemption…
However, as we move closer to the amount of miles required, we realise that having the miles is just the first step in a “series of steps” required to make this dream round-the-world redemption a reality.
Here’s why…
Why It Is So Difficult to Redeem Star Alliance RTW Tickets with KrisFlyer
1. To Ensure Availability of Tickets, You’ll Have to Book Almost A Year Out.
Having redeemed SQ First Class and Business Class tickets, we already knew that it was relatively difficult to redeem a saver award. We practically had to “camp” on the Singapore Airlines’ website and book the tickets when they’re available 355 days out. This is especially true for the First Class tickets that we redeemed as there would be typically less than 12 seats on each flight. And of course, as most frequent flyers know, redemption of a higher class award (i.e. business or first class) would also mean more value…
As you can see from the example above, the SQ First Class Tickets (in 2019) was redeemed at 125,000 (today it’s 141,000) and costs about ~$10,000 (today it’s $12,000). In fact, it seems that it has more value today than in 2019. However, the catch is this…
IT IS ACTUALLY QUITE DIFFICULT TO REDEEM PREMIUM TICKETS VIA KRISFLYER FREQUENT FLYER PROGRAMME. Here’s an example:
Today it’s 13th April 2024 and we’ve extracted the above information for flights on 1st April 2025. As you can see, some flights that are released less than a week ago, are already waitlisted. More interestingly, for the SIN-MUC flight, even Advantage Awards flights (the more expensive redemption tickets) are already waitlisted – almost a year away!
2. Lack of Experienced Staff for RTW redemption
Knowingly or unknowingly, Krisflyer does have some “barriers” that makes Star Alliance Round-The-World (RTW) that much more difficult. More specifically, the lack of experienced staff that knows the rules involving Round-The-World trip redemptions, which translates to frustration for redemptions even if a KF member has sufficient miles to make the redemption.
We’ve actually read many websites such as this, that shares experiences of past and present KF members trying to redeem the RTW tickets and the hurdles that they have to cross. Once we had the required number of miles, we wanted to test whether this was true and we made a call to the service centre to ask a couple of questions, namely;
a. Whether you can fly from Singapore to Athens via Munich. This is a pretty common “category” of question that actually tests how much the operator knows about the need to adhere strictly to a “one-direction” of travel as stated in the Star Alliance RTW terms and conditions.
b. Whether the 280,000 miles business class redemption is “all-inclusive”, regardless of miles required for redemption on another Star Alliance Airlines. This question tests whether the operator is aware of the scope of the RTW redemption and what is included and what is not.
c. Whether we can book the RTW Tickets at ION Orchard’s Singapore Airlines Service Centre. Although we knew the answer was yes, the operator had to do a check nonetheless.
For the above “relatively simple” questions, we had to wait on the line for 30 minutes. This was a verification of what had already been mentioned out there, that there really aren’t many KF staff trained in the aspect of Round-The-World redemptions. This is also fairly understandable since there would not be many people who will typically redeem this type of tickets. From the business perspective, it really does not make sense to train so many staff to cater for a really small population of clients who need this service. This could probably be a reason why Singapore Airlines took the difficult decision to axe its Star Alliance Round-The-World redemption programme.
3. Fees Associated with Round-The-World Redemption via SQ’s KrisFlyer Programme
As of early 2023, Star Alliance added a $250USD fee, specifically for RTW redemption via the KrisFlyer frequent flyer programme. This is yet another “barrier” for frequent flyers. Though not much in the grand scheme of things, it does place a psychological barrier that now, I can no longer just approach a service centre to ask about the availability of RTW flights.
Of course, from the business perspective, it is a great move. Since you only have a limited number of staff trained for RTW redemptions, it would be wise to allocate these trained staff to clients who are serious about the RTW redemption – and not those who are still in the “trying to find out more” stage.
All in all, the 3 reasons above makes it really really challenging for a typical frequent flyer to redeem a Star Alliance RTW ticket via KrisFlyer. Besides needing to accumulate 280,000 miles (or more) for a RTW redemption, which is already a challenge in and of itself, now you have to know your travel plans 1 year out – how many people who are working, can realistically do that? This would realistically leave 3 groups of people (which we can think of) being able to redeem the tickets – retirees, self-employed/business owners or those who are taking a “gap year” in this season of their life.
Secondly, from this 3 groups of people, they would have to sieve through the trove of information out there about Star Alliance RTW redemption via KrisFlyer before they would be willing to part with $250USD service fee – just to start working out the itinerary. Lastly, they would have to bear with the frustrations of dealing with the lack of knowledgeable staff that can adequately advise on Star Alliance RTW tickets redemption.
This leaves the population of people making this redemption really really small. A little bit of an “chicken and egg” problem – if SQ were to train more staff, perhaps more people would redeem this particular class of RTW tickets. But as it is, it all seems to lead to a logical end – the cessation of Star Alliance Round-The-World (RTW) tickets via Singapore Airline’s KrisFlyer frequent flyer programme.
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This leads us to the conclusion that the cancellation of RTW tickets by Singapore Airlines (KrisFlyer) could turn out to be a good thing afterall. Instead of us going through the frustration above (finding suitable flights, finding availability, booking a year out, paying additional fees etc.), we now know that we’d focus on a couple of flights that we want to experience and redeem them via the Savers Award – which we can now book a year out, without the need to string these flights together when booking via the Star Alliance RTW redemption.
Any thoughts about the cancelling/axing/cessation of Star Alliance Round-The-World (RTW) tickets by Singapore Airlines? If so, let us know more in the comments section below!
